Distributing my own scripts via homebrew

★ Distributing my own scripts via homebrew

17 Oct, 2025 • 404 words • 2 min

Thanks Justin Searls for the idea:

I use Homebrew all the time. Whenever I see a new CLI that offers an npm or uv install path alongside a brew one, I choose brew every single time.

Me too.

And yet, when it comes time to publish a CLI of my own, I usually just ship it as a Ruby gem or an npm package, because I had (and have!) no fucking clue how Homebrew works. I’m not enough of a neckbeard to peer behind the curtain as soon as root directories like /usr and /opt are involved, so I never bothered before today.

I understand how package managers work, and I’m even a package maintainer in Alpine Linux and Arch Linux, but until now I never bothered to package my own projects for others to consume.

Previously I talked about my new pancake repository. It consists of miscellaneous self-contained executables. As such, it is a great candidate for packaging.

I won’t submit it to upstream homebrew because it is overly specific, but that doesn’t prevent me from packaging it in a standalone repository.

In order to do so, I simply created a pancake.rb Formula:

     ruby
     
   
class Pancake < Formula
  desc "A collection of useful shell scripts"
  homepage "https://github.com/thiagowfx/pancake"
  head "https://github.com/thiagowfx/pancake.git"

  def install
    # keep-sorted start
    bin.install "aws_china_mfa/aws_china_mfa.sh" => "aws_china_mfa"
    bin.install "op_login_all/op_login_all.sh" => "op_login_all"
    bin.install "pritunl_login/pritunl_login.sh" => "pritunl_login"
    bin.install "sd_world/sd_world.sh" => "sd_world"
    # keep-sorted end
  end

  test do
    # Basic test to ensure the scripts are installed and executable.
    # keep-sorted start
    assert_predicate bin/"aws_china_mfa", :executable?
    assert_predicate bin/"aws_china_mfa", :exist?
    assert_predicate bin/"op_login_all", :executable?
    assert_predicate bin/"op_login_all", :exist?
    assert_predicate bin/"pritunl_login", :executable?
    assert_predicate bin/"pritunl_login", :exist?
    assert_predicate bin/"sd_world", :executable?
    assert_predicate bin/"sd_world", :exist?
    # keep-sorted end
  end
end

To install it, first tap the repository¹:

shell

% brew tap thiagowfx/pancake https://github.com/thiagowfx/pancake.git

Then install it, from HEAD because it is not currently versioned:

shell

% brew install --HEAD pancake

List all package contents:

     shell
     
   
% brew ls pancake
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/pancake/HEAD-1a58c53/bin/aws_china_mfa
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/pancake/HEAD-1a58c53/bin/op_login_all
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/pancake/HEAD-1a58c53/bin/pritunl_login
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/pancake/HEAD-1a58c53/bin/sd_world
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/pancake/HEAD-1a58c53/sbom.spdx.json

There’s no need to fiddle with $PATH, as this is already handled by homebrew:

     shell
     
   
% which aws_china_mfa
/opt/homebrew/bin/aws_china_mfa
% ls -al /opt/homebrew/bin/aws_china_mfa
lrwxr-xr-x@ - thiago.perrotta 13 Oct 14:43 /opt/homebrew/bin/aws_china_mfa -> ../Cellar/pancake/HEAD-1a58c53/bin/aws_china_mfa*

If this idea sticks, I intend to create a dedicated thiagowfx/homebrew-pancake repo, so that you can tap it with brew tap thiagowfx/pancake, without the need of specifying the full repository URL as per docs. For now though, the formula is hosted in the same repository as the executables. ↩︎

Backlinks

homebrew: turn go install into a formula (Aug 10, 2026)
cco: claude condom (sandbox) (Feb 26, 2026)
brew: upgrade HEAD formulas (Oct 23, 2025)

¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)